Mr Premji, the chairman of Wipro and India's third richest man, has offered to take third-year students from British universities to the company's headquarters in Bangalore for three months' intensive study and nine months on-the-job training with a view to returning them fit for work in the UK.

In an interview with The Telegraph in Davos, Mr Premji said his carefully designed training programme in India would better equip students than their courses in the UK.

"We have sophisticated courses – a mixture of classroom and practical training – which will make them employable anywhere in the world," he said.

Under Mr Premji's proposal, the British Government would pay around 25pc to 30pc of the training costs and the rest would be met by Wipro.

Mr Premji employs around 3,500 people in the UK, of which around a quarter are British. "This can be improved with the training," he said.

The tycoon, who has over four decades converted Wipro from a vegetable-oil producer into one of the leading IT services firms in the world, first put his idea to David Cameron when the prime minister visited India in 2010. The idea has since been discussed with officials in the Department of Education.